Assign a VICIdial List to a Campaign

How to attach a list to a campaign in VICIdial, what changes when you move it, and why a list can only run on one campaign.

A list of records on its own does nothing. It only starts dialing once you attach it to a Campaign — the configuration that holds your dial method, statuses, caller ID, and pacing. The campaign is the engine; the list is the fuel. Connecting the two is one of the most common things you'll do in VICIdial.

Making the assignment

Open the Modify List screen for the list you want, find the Campaign field, and pick the campaign from the dropdown. Save the form. That's it — the list is now attached. From this point the campaign's rules govern how those records are dialed, and eligible records begin flowing into the Hopper, the short queue that feeds the dialer.

The one-campaign rule

Creating a campaign in the VICIdial admin — Campaigns → Add A New Campaign.

A list can only be dialed on a single campaign at any one time. There's no splitting one list across two campaigns. If you need the same records dialed under two different sets of rules, you'd duplicate or reload them into separate lists. This rule exists to keep a record from being called twice at once, which would annoy customers and risk compliance trouble.

When you switch a list from one campaign to another, every one of that list's records currently sitting in the hopper is cleared out. This prevents duplicate calls, but it also means dialing pauses briefly while the new campaign refills the hopper.

flowchart LR
  A[List of leads] --> B[Campaign field set]
  B --> C[Campaign rules apply]
  C --> D[Eligible leads enter hopper]
  D --> E[Dialer places calls]
  B --> F{Switch campaign?}
  F -->|Yes| G[Old hopper entries flushed]
  G --> C

A useful side effect of this rule is that it keeps your reporting clean. Since every record in a list reports against exactly one campaign, your stats never get muddied by the same data showing up under two banners. It also makes pacing predictable — the campaign sees one consistent pool of records to work from, so its dial pacing and drop calculations stay accurate instead of fighting over shared data.

Make sure the list is active too

Assigning a list to a campaign is only half the job. The list also has to be Active, and it must not have passed its expiration date. If you assign a list and nothing dials, check the Active flag first — a deleted campaign even shows in red in the list table, which is a quick way to spot a broken link. Each Lead still has to match a dialable status defined by the campaign before it goes out, so a list full of completed or do-not-call records can be perfectly assigned and still produce no calls.

Switching a list between campaigns is also a normal part of running a busy operation, not something to fear. Maybe a list started life on a daytime campaign and you want to move it to an evening one, or you're reorganizing which agents work which data. The move is a single dropdown change and a save. Just remember the trade-off: the brief hopper flush means the very first calls after the switch take a moment to start, since the queue has to rebuild from scratch under the new campaign's settings before anything goes out.

If campaigns are new to you, the lists and leads guide maps out how everything connects, and what a VICIdial list is covers the container you're attaching.

Attach the list, confirm it's active, and you're calling. If you'd rather not stand up the campaign infrastructure yourself, our managed VICIdial gets you a working dialer in under a minute — see pricing.